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Monday, May 22, 2017

Before Flint's water crisis hit national news, I often wrote sentences that read something like this: lead poisoning is the most critical disability story that not enough people are talking about. Then Flint's crisis became visible, and suddenly people talked about this issue a lot more often, but mostly just about Flint.

Lead poisoning is a national crisis. It is a factor of environmental racism and classism. It's not a coincidence that poor black neighborhoods are so subject to this problem. In the disability rights movement, we need to adopt the mantra that environmental justice and economic justice are necessary for disability justice. And, of course, vice versa.

Vann R. Newkirk III, at The Atlantic, has written an outstanding long read on "The Poisoned Generation," on lead and other toxic exposure for poor black families in New Orleans and the lawsuits seeking recompense. Newkirk writes:

For people living in precarious financial, environmental, and social conditions, black skin often carries with it a life of additional traumas. Strata of segregation and exclusion manifest in the most fundamental factors of life—from the air people breathe to the water they drink—and even when they don’t kill outright, they often exacerbate existing issues. For those in the poisoned generation and beyond, blackness is a tightrope, and lead poisoning is just one of the ways to fall.

I strongly recommend reading the entire piece and getting up to speed on these issues.